Weiner Stephen D. A combat identification model for netted theater air defense systems

Massachusetts Inst of Tech, Lexington, Lincoln Lab, 1995. — 28 p.An integrated Theater Air Defense (TAD) system must handle a variety of targets including Theater Ballistic Missiles (TBMs), Cruise Missiles (CMs) and manned aircraft (A/C). It must destroy enemy targets without attacking friendly and neutral targets, especially manned A/C. The process of deciding which targets should be attacked is called Combat Identification (CID) which includes cooperative Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) as a sub-case. Recently there has been considerable interest in netted TAD systems in which information on enemy targets and defense actions is passed from one defense system element to others. As a consequence, a defense sensor may have information available on a target that is better than (or different from) that which it obtains directly by its own measurements; this information may include target ID. The defense elements must use the combination of internal and external information to decide on subsequent actions. There are several important cases where use of external ID information may significantly improve TAD performance. One of these is when one defense sensor detects the launch or take-off of an A/C or CM providing ID by virtue of country of origin. If the target remains in track by at least one sensor at all times, its ID can be passed along. A second case is where a high quality sensor which can do non-cooperative ID but cannot engage the target passes its ID information to a lower quality sensor which can engage the target. This report presents a parametric model of how well the combat ID function can be performed in a netted TAD system. It does not assess the performance of particular ID techniques but rather assumes parametric values for this performance in terms of leakage (mistaking an enemy for a friend) and fratricide (mistaking a friend or neutral for an enemy) for an individual target.